too much alcohol in home made wine

when making some cherry wine, i used whole frozen cherry's in the primary. i added water and sugar along with yeast.
it was difficult to get a s.p. reading with the cherry's in the primary.

after fermentation i placed the fluid in carboy.
1 year later and 6 rackings the wine has too much alcohol.

with out watering it down, is there any way to reduce the alcohol content or mask the taste?

Hello DyWayne, welcome to the forum I am happy you joined us.

No. As far as I know there is no other way to reduce the alcohol content without watering the wine down...

DuWayne when you say the wine has too much alcohol, do you mean it has a high alcohol content or that it has that high alcohol flavor? If it an antistringint taste like a burning nose sensation and rough dry mouth, you may want to consider a few things. Blend it with something like an apple or bananna wine which will not add much taste but mellow that flavor a bit, you could try sweetening the wine, or you could try to find some cherry juice or press your own after you pit and add it with some sorbate to prevent further fermentation. Whatever you do, I suggest you do it do a very small amount of the stuff and see how it goes before you do your whole batch.

I'm wondering if the taste you are getting might be from the pits of the cherries, they add kind of a nasty off flavor if you leave them in. Assuming they had pits, you said whole frozen etc.

We might be able to estimate your alcohol content if you can tell us a) how much and what kind of cherries, b)how much sugar, and finally c) the total amount produced. Would help to know what sort of yeast you used and what you did for the acid content.

Get back to me and try to describe the taste or problem a bit more precisely IE "the wine tastes sharp and sour" or "it has a smell like rubbing alcohol" etc.etc. Good luck!

DGreene, thank you so very much for this explicit information. I hope DuWayne will check back in soon and read it

well while you on the alcohol content thinking cap .. ever hear of low alcohol from kit wines .. should they all be about 10 to 12 percent ? standard wines i mean . my sister said mine were good low alcohol wines .. ahaah

Tonyyy, and that is what is most important after ALL, right: the taste?

Tony with kit wines they are usually low content mostly because they want it to work not get a stuck fermentation. If you are familiar with your brix scale or specific gravity you can adjust it somewhat, but keep in mind it may not be what you want to do. If you are making a Beaujolais or a Chablis you may want lower content. If you are making a hearty red then read on..

Most kit wines start out with a spec grav of about 1.090 which gives you approx 12 percent alcohol. You can increase that somewhat by adding grape concentrate or feeding it sugar along the way, just keep in mind that you probably don't want to start out by adding sugar as some yeast can not handle it, also some yeast will not ferment beyond a certain point in alcohol percentage. Be prepared for a stuck fermentation. Add sugar preferebly corn sugar (dextrose) at around 1.15 in your primary to take it up to about 1.25 which may be about a cup and a half. Don't over do it. You can get about 1.3 percent more alcohol with every .010 you increase the spec gravity at that point.

The other trick is to be patient and let the wine ferment out to dryness. Most will ferment down to .992, which is a good half percent more alcohol than .996 which is when they want to have you add all the stuff.

Here is some important things to keep in mind:
Adding in the primary. Don't over do it. Keep the projected content around 14 percent to be safe. Above that you are pushing your luck. Check the spec grav OFTEN. If it stops moving rehydrate some EC1118 yeast which you should keep on hand with 2 tablespoons of dextrose and a half tsp of yeast nutrient in a cup of warm (110F) water for about 12 hours or more and then stir it into the wine. It has high tolerance to alcohol. Also you should realize that the higher content will require you to age it more before it is drinkable. I suggest you do that in a clean 5 or 6 gallon carboy and let it stay in there with an airlock after you fine and clear it adding the sorbate and sulfites etc. Add an extra 1/4 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfate to the finished wine then rack into the clean carboy and age it in bulk for 6 months before you bottle. The flavor will be much smoother and it is better for the wine to age that way rather than in a bottle. Take a sample after about 6 months and see how it tastes and if it's ready, bottle it.

One other thing occurred to me, you might be having to add too much water when you top off. It's better to top with wine, but if you need to top off with a lot of water just add about 4 oz per liter of vodka. Better yet save some of your weak wine for topping off. If you are making a Merlot and you have leftover Cabernet it wont make a lot of difference if you top it with a couple bottles. If you start adding gallons you might have a flavor problem. Also only add oaked wines to something you want oak in.

Oh and MaiTai don't you know that alcohol adds mouthfeel and some taste?

Quick lesson in how to judge alcohol content in a wine with your eyes and a glass.

Glass, meet wine. Swirl it in the glass. Observe how the splashed wine runs down the inside of the glass. See how it starts to kind of streak in lines? That is what they call a wines "legs" and it is purely from the alcohol in it. The higher it is the more legs. Get a good bottle of 14+ percent like a Malbec or something and swirl it around, you will see what I mean right away. Then check the weak wine. It's an easy way to look at it but not a replacement for using a hydrometer as you are making the wine.

Great! Thank you so much, DGreene. Now I didn't know about the swirling method for alcohol. Thank you !!

(Did I already mention how happy I am you joined here? I'm making wine -the same - for ages now and only now am discovering new things, because of you!)

Well good that is the way one of these forums is supposed to work! Yeah you can't really test how much alcohol there is but you can make a pretty good test after a while doing it. You can also get a vinometer which is a thin tube with a open part on the end, you can only test dry wines, residual sugar screws up the test but you can tell exactly how much alcohol content there is in a finished wine.

By the way there is a free label program you can use for 30 days for free on download.com. I am checking it out at home, it works well. Check it out just look on download.com and search wine.

oooh yeah try and learn something new everyday .. even what not to do . so anything i can do after the fact with the weak wine ? or would adding something need more aging . like a touch of ... love the info

Thanks for the tip, DGreene

tonyyy, 'and what not do' - indeed: is also very important

Tony if it's bottled then the wine is done. Nothing else you can do with it at this point. If you try to decant it I suppose you could just add a shot of vodka to the thing when you do that, but as far as a fix for the wine there really is none. Trying to rebottle it will just add too much 02 and wreak havoc on the wine.

yeah thought so .. but thought i would try .. just have to drink twice as much .. man that sucks ahahahah

oooh yeah try and learn something new everyday .. even what not to do . so anything i can do after the fact with the weak wine ? or would adding something need more aging . like a touch of ... love the info

DGreene, that's right. After bottling one is pretty much stuck with it and have to wait how it will turn out.

i made some wine out of a pound of red grapes, 4 cups of sugar, one pack of yeast, and half gallon of water, let it sit for about six weeks with a cheese cloth tightly fitted on top, and then poured it out today. It was VERY dry tasting, almost like rubbing alchohol, so i put one more cup of sugar in it. I put it in a half gallon pitcher, and it's pink and a bit cloudy. Will it be fine to drink like this? It tastes better with the added sugar, it just seems like it will kick my but if i drink more than an ounce! Feedback needed before i drink something that might kill me!

Drummergirl with the added sugar it will probably go on fermenting for a while since the yeast will eat that sugar, so do no I repeat DO NOT bottle it because you will have exploding bottles or shooting corks at the very least.

That being said, the taste you are describing is call antistringint (probably spelled totally wrong tho) which is what they use rubbing alcohol for.

Yes, you can drink it like that. No it will not kill you, the yeast is actually pretty good for you although if you have a wicked mold allergy it might trigger a slight allergy attack. If you did not itch all over after you drank it then you will not be affected. If you want it to be a better color/clarity then put it all in a gallon glass bottle with an airlock on it or a condom on top to keep oxygen from getting in the wine. After a month or so it will clear somewhat, then you can siphon off into another gallon bottle and let it sit some more. I suggest you add either a campden tablet crushed and stir gently into it or 1/16th teaspoon of potassium metabisulfate. This will protect the wine. For now better rack it into the bottle and do the airlock/condom thing because I guarantee it is going to ferment that sugar you added. If you want it sweet get some potassium sorbate and add per the instructions, but do NOT add without sulfite or it will cloud. If it was me I would not bother, drink it. Make some more. It's wine already right? I doubt this will improve very much with age but some of the harsh flavor will mellow to be sure.

Drummergirl, welcome to the forum You got the best advice available from DGreene, so I hope you will check back in soon so you can read it

Just thought I might give you some advice on determining alcohol at home without the use of really expensive equipment.

This method was developed through quite extensive research by an academic in the U.S. (William Honeyman, B.Sc., PhD.) and is said to be as accurate as the ebuliometer which most wineries and labs use.

1. Measure the Specific Gravity (S.G.) of the wine you wish to test. We will call this figure S.G.1 (you need a hydrometer to measure this)
2. Measure exactly one pint of the wine. We will call this the sample.
3. In an enamel or glass pan, boil the sample down to roughly half its original volume. This drives off some of the water and all of the alcohol, because alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water. The sample now consists of water, residual sugar, polyphenolics, pigments, acids and proteins - that is all the non-alcholic constituents of the wine.
4. With distilled water or rainwater, make the boiled down sample up to exactly 1 pint again. Do not use tap water here because of its considerable mineral content which affects the result. Some bottled waters are okay, but check the back label and ensure it is mineral free (there are some brands available in Australia so I imagine the U.S. would have some also).
5. Cool the sample down to 60 degrees farenheit, or whatever temp your hydrometer is calibrated for.
6. Read the S.G. of the sample (we will call this S.G.2. You will find it is higher than S.G.1 because you have removed alcohol and replaced it with water.
7. Subtract S.G.1 from S.G.2. The difference is called the Spirit Indication (S.I.).

Read the alcohol strength from the figures below:

S.I.
1.5 = 1% alc/vol
2= 1.3%
3=2%
4=2.7%
5=3.4%
6=4.1%
7=4.9%
8=5.6%
9=6.4%
10=7.2%
11=8%
12=8.8%
13=9.7%
14=10.5%
15=11.4%
16=12.3%
17=13.2%
18=14.1%
19=15.1%
20=16%
21=17%
22=18%
23=19%
24=20%

You do have to be willing to forgo 1 pint of your lovely wine for this of course

Hi Oz. You give some pretty good advice here. However a vinometer gives you fairly accurate results, and you can purchase one for a minimal amount of money at this point. Less than $10 US dollars, possibly less on eBay. Measure the wine before sweetening back, take a dozen samples and average it. You only need about an ounce of wine to do this, and it takes about 5 minutes. In either method, vinometer or spirit indication, residual sugar is a problem, so there is no real advantage with either one if you are trying to determine sweet wine alcohol content. Good record keeping is a very good way to determine roughly what you have by calculating potential alcohol with your initial specific gravity reading.

actually the method described works for both sweet and dry wines. The S.G. readings are obviously higher with dissolved sugar, but the S.I. will always be the same for two wines with the same alcohol whether sweet or dry... works with fortifieds too.
I much prefer this method and have only found vinometers to give a reasonably accurate result

Hi

i am new to this site and have just started home wine making...i was trying to find out the best way to measure the alchol content in my first batch of wine...

someone told me to minus my first SG reading from my last SG and then divide by 7.362...

can anyone tell me if this is a correct way of determining the alchol content of the wine .

Hi Senior... there are some tips on alcohol measurements in some of the posts above.

As you will see there are a number of options. I wouldn't go by your initial gravity readings simply because there are a number of factors throughout the fermentation process that makes it hard to get an accurate figure.

The most accurate method above is the Honeyman method, however this requires you to use quite a bit of your wine... so only really appropriate if making in excess of 5 gallons or so.

Thanks Ozwino

will give it a go

my first attempt was simular i used concentrate with preservatives (boil for 10 to 15 mins to get rid of these) it firmented great but does have a stronger alcohol taste i think maybe i`ll add to the recipe next time to give extra flavor apart from that it was fine and clear as shop baught wines

i always test mine on myself but if it smells ok i dont see much problem unless youve created some super 10000% drink that burns through soil brick they try it on the wife